Beginnings

A few days ago, a friend and I were leaving philosophy class when we began to discuss an idea the professor had brought up in passing, on his way to talking about the event of existence and the synthesis that is the human self. He had commented on the lack of females in the classroom. "Women don't seem to be as interested in philosophy as men," he said, before moving on, silently adding an oh well. It seemed true; with the exception of my Introduction to Philosophy class, the courses I had taken in the department tended to be male-heavy, including the teachers. As my friend and I talked about it, we couldn't come up with an answer. Why shouldn't women be as interested in philosophical matters, the unanswerable questions of the world, the impossible, the infinite? Were women incapable of deep thought?

Then I discovered that The New York Times opinion pages had been thinking about this question as well. In this article published on Sept.  2, by a woman, the author contemplates the lack of professional women philosophers, which, it turns out, is statistically backed up. She cites "alienation, loneliness, implicit bias, stereotype threat, microaggression, and outright discrimination" as the discouraging factors. But many people have had to face similar obstacles in order to get where they wanted to be. Where would we be if Bob Dylan had abandoned rock n' roll when his fans were in uproar over "Like A Rolling Stone"'s electric sound in 1965? If Albert Einstein had said, "ah, screw it," after making some major mistakes in the field of physics (check out a list of them here)? 

Life is never without obstacles, and never without questions. Deep Thought tackles both and brings life into the focus--the good, the bad, and the simply absurd.